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Revenge On Reverse Engineering

Phoronix: Revenge On Reverse Engineering

Revenge, a clean-room reverse engineering utility being developed by Oliver McFadden for Radeon graphics cards, is nearing its 1.0 release. This utility is designed for reverse engineering the ATI graphics cards and their binary driver.

as ati said - radeonhd will be a simple opensource driver, with basic functionality.

when ati will release final set of docs and say that it's not going to release any more - then revenge will be put to use again. it's going to be way easier then, since many registers name and behavior will be already known.

as ati said - radeonhd will be a simple opensource driver, with basic functionality.

when ati will release final set of docs and say that it's not going to release any more - then revenge will be put to use again. it's going to be way easier then, since many registers name and behavior will be already known.

I think there are two different discussions going on here -- one about Conntest and one about Revenge.

Conntest is a utility the SuSE guys used to collect connector information on cards so that they could put the resulting info into the radeonhd driver and support new configurations. Those reports are generally not needed any more since the driver now picks up connector info from AtomBIOS. Revenge is a reverse engineering tool designed to intercept driver accesses to help figure out how to program the chip.

Without sounding naive, our plan is to release all the information we can have in the public domain with acceptable business risk, so that open source developers can spend more time writing great drivers and less time trying to understand the hardware.

If the outcome of our documentation effort is that we just raise the starting point for reverse engineering, which will pretty much guarantee that RE efforts will discover and disclose information which puts our business at risk, that's not a great way to motivate other HW suppliers (or even AMD) to support open source development in the future.

I am asking you to fundamentally re-think the relationship between open source developers and hardware vendors, at least in our case. Make sense ?

I am asking you to fundamentally re-think the relationship between open source developers and hardware vendors, at least in our case. Make sense ?

Now, where was I ? Oh yes, "la la la la la ...."

Heh... I do believe I said "You shouldn't have said that" as much for tongue in cheek purposes as for a very real thing- we're both walking a fine line here, the community and AMD. I don't want to step on your employer's toes to the point that they don't do this anymore. I want to have a Winner all the way around with this. But, in the same breath, I have to point out that every one of the hardware companies (AMD included in that...) dealing with Media "protection" have it bass-ackwards when it comes to the media space.

You see...

Media Companies: Multi-Billion Dollar Business.
Hardware and Software Companies: Multi-TRILLION Dollar Business that hardly depends on the other to exist.

You don't NEED them. Honest.

There's enough wonderous stuff popping up without the Warner's and Disney's of the world- and it's happening in spite of them. That's because they're more interested in strip mining the profits out of Culture and trying to "dictate" what is and isn't Culture.

Heh... I do believe I said "You shouldn't have said that" as much for tongue in cheek purposes as for a very real thing- we're both walking a fine line here, the community and AMD. I don't want to step on your employer's toes to the point that they don't do this anymore.

You summed it up well -- I'm getting very "wise", professional reactions from the developers w.r.t. reverse engineering -- enough so to surprise some of the folks here.

There's a sign on a roof garden in London -- "Gentlemen will not, and others must not pick the flowers". So far I've run into nothing but gentlemen.

Originally Posted by Svartalf

Media Companies: Multi-Billion Dollar Business.
Hardware and Software Companies: Multi-TRILLION Dollar Business that hardly depends on the other to exist. You don't NEED them. Honest.

Yeah, last time I looked the entertainment business was smaller than the potato chip business. Question is what the exit strategy would be -- if we say "we're not supporting DRM any more" the OEMs will thank us for sharing our views, make it clear that they respect our philosophical stand, and then buy all their graphics chips from Green or Blue.

Originally Posted by Svartalf

There's enough wonderous stuff popping up without the Warner's and Disney's of the world- and it's happening in spite of them. That's because they're more interested in strip mining the profits out of Culture and trying to "dictate" what is and isn't Culture.

I wouldn't know... I don't watch television. Just old Sledge Hammer re-runs

You summed it up well -- I'm getting very "wise", professional reactions from the developers w.r.t. reverse engineering -- enough so to surprise some of the folks here.

Won't surprise me at all. I'm an old geezer in this space, having used Linux for well over a decade and been in the industry some 20+ years. I'm one of the people that worked hard to get us to the position that we're in today- and it didn't come by way of stepping on people's toes.

As it stands, while I've issues with DRM and all, I'll take what all I can get in the way of this sort of support you're working towards giving us. I wish it was happening faster (as the proprietary stuff just isn't there yet- sorry...) so we could get enough up that I don't have to question whether or not one of the titles I'm working on will have adequate driver support or not. As it stands right now, your main competitor has the only suitable parts and adequate drivers. I don't like that situation, as I'm sure you and AMD don't like it either.

There's a sign on a roof garden in London -- "Gentlemen will not, and others must not pick the flowers". So far I've run into nothing but gentlemen.

I think you'll find that I fit into the Gentlemen category in that analogy. I won't go and do RE on things unless it becomes clear that I won't get the info I need and I actually NEED some functionality.

Too easy to alienate a vendor otherwise- too easy to negotiate a rational response to things like DRM support in the hardware.

Yeah, last time I looked the entertainment business was smaller than the potato chip business. Question is what the exit strategy would be -- if we say "we're not supporting DRM any more" the OEMs will thank us for sharing our views, make it clear that they respect our philosophical stand, and then buy all their graphics chips from Green or Blue.

I'm not 100% sure that's what'll happen. We're already about to hit a threshold where the DRM and other stuff like it will get enough in the way of people doing things they've gotten used to doing that they'll quit buying the tech gear. What happens then?

I wouldn't know... I don't watch television. Just old Sledge Hammer re-runs

I'm not much farther behind you there. All I care to watch is things like Future Weapons on Discovery- and the music I listen to the most isn't signed on a label and you find the live performances in Renaissance Festivals.

What the Media Companies tend to offer these days is Excrement Locked In A Safe. No thanks, I'll pass on that.